Richmond User Experience

DESCRIPTION

Want to facilitate breakthrough ideas, solve business challenges and validate products with customers? A Design Sprint might just be the answer.

The Design Sprint, originally developed at Google, is a short, time-boxed process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It is a short, intense effort (a sprint!) conducted by a small, functional team where the results set the direction for the product, service, or feature.

In this workshop we will learn the tools & techniques of the same structured framework that has been used to design, prototype and validate solutions for startups, agencies, and even non-profits. We will be hands-on for 120 minutes using the same activities you would complete during a sprint.

DATE AND TIME

LOCATION

REGISTER HERE

REFUND POLICY

Refunds up to 1 day before event

WHO’S THIS WORKSHOP FOR?

Anyone with tough problems to solve – designers, developers, product managers, marketers, content strategists, CEOs/founders, even human resources. The Design Sprint process has been used to solve a wide array of problems from the UX of digital products to wayfinding in a museum to the hiring process at Google.

This will be a fast-paced, intense workshop. While not a requirement, it will be most successful if all participants have at least some familiarity with the Design Sprint process. Google Ventures offers an excellent primer on Design Sprints to help you get familiar.

AGENDA

3:30 – 4:00: Arrive, get settled and warm up (it is a sprint after all!)

4:00 – 6:00: Sprint!

6:00 – 6:30: Cool down and say goodbye

PRESENTER

Mike Shelton is a Product Designer at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Working from his home office in Richmond, Va., Mike collaborates with over 500 automatticians in 50+ countries to help democratize publishing and keep the web open.

At Automattic, Mike prototypes and implements user-centered design solutions for WordPress.com. He recently worked on a new Automattic product, get.blog, where he and his team used design sprints to re-imagine what the experience of purchasing and managing a domain should look like.

This year has been a watershed one for UI design tools: Adobe finally launched X D, their direct competitor to Sketch, Sketch itself has not stopped evolving and is about to switch to a subscription model, and the venerable Photoshop remains a default install for many a UI and visual designer.

Though UI design is only one aspect of UX, it is the part of the process that defines the look and feel, as well as creating the assets for development. In that respect, choosing the best tool can have a big impact on both the quality of the designer’s work as well as their efficiency.

So, has the rise of Sketch and the advent of X D changed the playing field? Join us July 27th at CapTech as UI designer Rob Musser presents his analysis of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, X D, and Sketch.

Get ready to RUMBLE!!!

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We used our August 27 session to Define RUX (note the capital D in define) using the Design Studio approach. We walked through and agreed upon who RUX serves, how RUXers want to be served, and what those programs might be. All notes below.

Please let us know if we have missed anything.

The next steps will be to revisit these thoughts and formulate a plan. Passionate about the direction of RUX and want to be part of the planning process? Let us know!

RUX Design Studio NOTES:

Who we Serve

People who…
• Make digital sh!t
• Create
• Want to learn
• Seek a Job
• Want to meet similar people

Also,
• Teachers
• Students
• Geeks
• Collaborators

And to a lesser degree …
Designers, beer drinkers, people who want speed, brainstormers, anthropologists, people who want to know what’s going on, people who want to be challenged, people who want to overcome obstacles, people who want to share insights, stay current; futurists, job offerers, product owners, business owners.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 6 PM to 7:30 PM

It is important for mobile app and website designers to test their products with typical end users to ensure the products work as intended and that an optimal user experience (UX) is provided. What many designers do not know is that getting user feedback, including understanding what users look at while using a product, is not as difficult as it once was. Modern technology has made this technique quite simple and affordable.

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Thanks to the generosity of Rosenfeld Media, RUX members get a huge discount on their books! Just go to the Web site, order books. Then use the discount code UXBOOKRICHMOND at checkout. It is now active for 30% off RM products through May 15, 2010.

Many thanks to Rosenfeld Media (follow then at @rosenfeldmedia on Twitter).

What
User experience professionals often find themselves working on projects with tight deadlines, tighter budgets, and unreasonably high expectations for success. Too often user research, usability, and design processes are compressed or even cut entirely for the sake of time, while development and business analysis time is increased. As we UX professionals become more involved with agile development methods, we have discovered novel approaches to user-centered design that are adaptable to any budget or deadline.

This discussion will explore how user research, usability, IA and design practices are adapted and thrive in projects that seem inhospitable to UXD.

Two hours of UX war stories from the trenches!

Who this is for:

Information architects (IAs)

Interaction designers (IxDs)

Visual designers

Project managers

Developers

Business analysts

Agile enthusiasts & critics alike

We will discuss:

How to provide timely and valuable UX support to stressed web development teams

How to let go and modify research/design/development dogmas

How to advocate for users when time for user research and usability are unavailable